So since JJ is getting beat up on twitter and here and everywhere and I’ve previously been extremely defensive of JJ (and still am) and his decisions, perhaps a bit too defensive but that’s because of how toxic reads of his mistakes have pushed me further into defending him. I do also recognize the many complexities of the situation and will say that two three things can be true at once:
Shane had every right to hide things and he owes no one disclosure of his relationship
JJ has his reasons for feeling hurt about the situation that are realistic and valid. (And for that I will say what I say to the kids I babysit: your feelings are always valid, your behavior is not).
Rachel Reid did a piss poor job of conveying the above particularly when you add the racial dynamics and implications of the situation
I have grown to realize a lot of you severely underestimate just how much antiblackness we have to swallow for the sake of our personal peace and our livelihoods. I'm not saying that to be mean or to make you go into a guilt spiral- that would be a useless reaction anyway- but I do want you to consider it. That what you believe to be peace is not just because it "is".
"Well if it was important why didn't anyone say it sooner?" "if it was important, why didn't they say it was racist?" peer, a good 75-80% of what I might say to the white and/or nonblack people that offend me directly goes swallowed for the sake of my paychecks and running water, or God forbid to avoid a bullet. Or if I'm online (where that number shrinks significantly), to be left the fuck alone 🤣
Y'all are very used to not having to hear that feedback bc we've been forcibly socialized into accepting that you won't take it well and often have the power to make it not worth our while to speak. Retaliation is common. That's why it's perturbing to folks when Black people DO speak up. Interrupts the status quo 😅
y’all i don’t make party pooper posts (say that fast 5 times) that often bc I generally go by the don’t like don’t engage principle but can we plsssss kill the yuna continuing to call ilya her fav son joke it has such racist cultural implications given he’s the white son in law and rr making yuna say it once was weird enough
tbh all the poc fans I’ve spoken to about it do not vibe with it so im gonna take that as validation that its off
peace and love and all that but yah we gotta just retire that one 😭
I don't give a fuck that it was an accident. Hayden is a straight white man who has so little to fear, even as a public figure, that he doesn't even rewatch his fanmail recordings before sending them out. This is a man who has never once in his life had to worry about his career being destroyed by one candid photo. By one text sent to the wrong person. By one person overhearing him in the adjacent hotel room. Shane and Ilya have had to spend their lives in a state of hypervigilance. All of the most painful moments of their relationship are caused by them being unable to be together, and they would have realized how they felt for each other and gotten together much sooner if it weren't for queerphobia. Hayden married Jackie how long after meeting her again? And how was it, again, that they met? Was it in public? Did they get to dance together in public? And then I'm supposed to fucking feel sorry for him because his carelessness, which can only exist because of his immense privilege, destroyed his gay wasian best friend's career? I'm supposed to fucking feel sorry for him when it's because of him that Ilya will never see his mother's grave again? I'm supposed to feel sorry for Hayden? For Hayden? For Hayden? Oh my God. It disgusts me.
Shane and Ilya don't even keep pictures of each other on their phones. They don't have pictures of the love of their lives on their own fucking phones. They don't have pictures of the love of their lives on their own fucking phones on the extremely off chance either of their phones ever ended up in the wrong hands. Ilya has hung on to the photos he took of him and Shane together at the MVP awards for years because they're all he has. He cherishes them because they are all he can have. He took them to begin with because he thought he would never get to actually be with Shane, and if nothing else, he wanted a photo of them together, and if that was all he could have then he would take it. He wasn't even dreaming of more at the time. It was an impossibility he could be with Shane. A photo with him alone was more than he had hoped for and he hung on to it for years. For years. And I'm supposed to feel sorry for Hayden? Do you get it do you get it do you get it?
shrodinger's white mediocrity is being given diversity accolades for doing less than bare minimum, where your works are simultaneously mindless and shallow gay hockey smut not worthy of deep political literary criticism when it fails to meet standards of consideration and care in the handling of its main character’s neurodiversity and racial marginalization, but are works of monumentally high importance in advocating for diversity and representation when it’s time to collect institutional recognition that’s beneficial to its marketing.
Let me tell you a story about media representation and how it informs creativity.
When I was a kid, I wrote a (terrible, rambling, thoughtlessly colonialist) sci-fi story with a huge ensemble cast. It was a hugely diverse cast too, with tons of (problematically described) POC. I even had characters with disabilities and non-binary genders. This was mostly because my ideas about what sci-fi was and what characters could be in it were largely informed, at the time, by Star Trek and the Star Wars prequels and Independence Day and The Fifth Element and Men in Black and The Matrix. Stories with lots of POC in them, characters with disabilities, characters who were from disparate cultures and had disparate identities and ways of being.
When I was a kid, I also wrote a (really fucking terrible, even more rambling, preachy as fuck) fantasy novel. And there was not a single person of color in it. Oh there were oppressed groups – represented by light-skinned or animal-featured nonhumans. This was mostly because my ideas about what fantasy was and what characters could be in it were largely informed, at the time, by JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis, by Disney and Don Bleuth and Jim Henson. Stories with NO POC in them, where everyone was able-bodied and white and usually thin and pretty (extra points for ‘pretty’ being described as ‘fair’) unless they were EVIL.
I am an NDN woman, and none of my characters ever, EVER, were.
Because until I actually gave it direct and attentive thought, before I considered the ramifications of setting and characters and who could be in what stories, my ARTISTIC VISION and my creative process was hugely affected by the stories I’d been told my entire life. I did not imagine POC characters in fantasy stories, but I did imagine them in Sci-fi stories. Because I’d been told by the stories I’d been fed from early childhood that POC could exist in the future, but not in fantasy; fantasy was set in mythical whitelandia not really resembling Europe, and if POC were even mentioned they were from exotic foreign lands to the south and the east (and they were seldom characters, certainly never core characters).
I say this because I am tired of hearing writers say ‘well I just didn’t imagine the character that way! You can’t fault me for that, it’s my story and my inspiration!’
Your inspiration does not come from a perfect, unbiased void. Every story you tell is informed by every story you’ve ever been told, and you cannot divorce yourself from that. So if you want to be a thoutful, aware writer who is writing the best, richest story you can write, if you want your creative process to be as free and uninhibited as it can be, you need to stop and think about what informs your creativity and whether or not it is, in fact, problematic as fuck.
Rachel Reid never had any intent behind making Shane a person of color and this passage below is the biggest proof of that:
“Ilya glanced at the end of the table, where Shane was sitting.As Ilya had suspected, Shane looked confused and uncomfortable. Hockey had never made Shane sad for a minute of his life. Ilya couldn't pretend to know how it felt to be let down by the game he loved-not in the way Max or Ryan had been-but he was more aware of hockey'sflaws than Shane was. He'd been paying more attention, over the past few years, to the darker side of his sport.”
More on why Rachel Reid’s racial bias becomes extremely evident throughout Shane’s arc below the cut.
So while writing a fic where Shane talks to his son about how hockey is hard for people that look like them and how it’s okay if he doesn’t want to play hockey because of it, I recalled a few lines in The Long Game that don’t sit right with me.
I have talked about how Rachel Reid’s refusal to engage with white supremacy as a core problem in hockey harms her analysis of the other problems that are present in hockey.
But this to me sits differently to that.
This to me is the clearest evidence that not a lick of thought was put into writing Shane as a biracial Asian man in a sport that is dominated by white people and a white supremacist culture to its core. It is also pretty clear that she doesn’t think much of Shane with regards to his character motivations in the Long Game.
So let’s unpack this:
Rachel Reid, at least from Ilya’s point of view has stated that Shane looks *confused* and uncomfortable by discussion of hockey’s flaws. I’ll give you uncomfortable since it’s always uncomfortable when flaws in a thing you love as much as Shane loves hockey are brought up. But confused?
You are going to sit here and tell me a gay, autistic, biracial Asian man who has played hockey his entire life is unaware as to why some hockey players hate the institution? As if this isn’t the same institution that is the reason Shane can’t be public with the man he loves. As if he wasn’t an Asian child playing hockey in Canada. And Asian child that was good at hockey.
To make my points in this, I will be using examples from prior to 2020 only despite, with an April 2022 release date, the long game manuscript being due April 2021 at the latest, which was after the hockey world had started reckoning with race.
There is extensive documentation of racism including anti Asian racism in Canadian Hockey that spans decades.
But let’s get more specific and talk about specific hockey players who have been open about their experiences:
Larry Kwong is the first person of Asian descent to be drafted and play in the National Hockey League. His debut season was in 1948 and he spent only 60 seconds on the ice. This was his only NHL game. Kwong is known for breaking the color barrier in ice hockey, despite First Nations players having played in the NHL first. I, personally, do not known enough First Nations history to comment on why that is.
In November 2019, a Calgary Flames coach resigned for being racially abusive to his players.
It took until 2019 for the NHL to implement stricter consequences for slurs.
A 13 year old Black child was racially abused by the opposing team and their fan, also in 2019.
Val James spoke about his experiences of racism in 2015.
Of the 8676 men that have played in the NHL, only 45 of them have identified as Asian. For the math challenged, that is 0.5% of total NHL players and many of these men are from recent years.
Shane is a minority (Asian) within a minority (people of color) in a sport that is dominated by white people.
There is zero, zero, zero chance that an Asian child makes it through peewee hockey without at least one experience of racism directed at them (or their parents). There is zero chance that that same child who turns out to be very good at hockey also makes it through triple A, major juniors, and all the way into the NHL without a single hockey related incident making a biracial Asian child sad.
Sidney Crosby has talked about adults encouraging their children to make dirty hits on him because he was very good at hockey.
An asian child in that same set of circumstances is in for a worse fate than Crosby because they are Asian and they are good at a sport that racist white Canadians tie to their national identity. Whatever abuse Sidney Crosby, who Shane is based partly off of, double it and give it to Shane and you might get close to how he was treated as a child.
Shane would’ve been exposed to the worst of hockey’s racism probably from the moment that anyone realized how good he was. He’s always been the best everywhere he’s played which means he’s always been outperforming white children which means he’s always been exposed to the worst racism that Canadian hockey culture has to offer.
We know this because white kids in hockey get bullied for being good. We know this because children of color in hockey get bullied for being not white.
And Shane is BOTH!!!!!
Even removing hockey culture, do you not know that Asian children experience racism and prejudice in Canada, that they experience at school and on the playground and at the park and at summer camp, why the fuck wouldn’t it be present in hockey when it’s the same damn kids? It is the “Canadians are too progressive to be racist!” bullshit that is their national image because they’re marginally better than their neighbors to the south but it doesn’t mean that racism doesn’t exist.
The idea that a person of color doesn’t know how bad hockey culture can be is absurd. The idea that said person’s white immigrant partner is somehow more aware of hockey’s flaws than a person of color is absurd. The idea that a person of color is totally unaware and even confused by discussion of hockey’s flaws is so difficult to imagine that it’s laughable.
The idea that hockey has never made Shane sad is functionally impossible. It relies on a history of Canada that doesn’t exist, and certainly one that doesn’t exist in the GCU universe seeing as Scott’s coach talks about the racism he faced and that doesn’t all go away in a few decades, especially in an organization so reticent to change as the NHL.
Like, be so forreal, a biracial Asian man in a league that has had less than 45 Asian players total, who billeted and played hockey in a majority white city, who grew up playing hockey in Canada and then joined a league with a racism problem that is documented by the book has zero awareness of the flaws of hockey?
Are you seriously going to try and sell me on that?
The only logical explanation is that Rachel Reid wasn’t writing Shane as a person of color. She was writing him from her white lens without a lick of regard to the ethnic background she gave him and it makes Shane’s character lack so much dimension and depth in the long game.
Shane is the person who doesn’t want to come out for no reason or the one who is so attached to his terrible team and teammates that he doesn’t notice hockey’s flaws instead of him being one of literally probably 5 Asian men in a league that starts the racial abuse at peewee and continues into the big leagues who has to manage being Asian and gay and dating his rival and all the implications that come with it.
You can’t both make Shane an Asian man in hockey and make him totally oblivious to hockey’s flaws.
I went back and forth on whether I wanted to actually acknowledge this take or if I was just going to block and move on like I normally do, and I blocked and unblock them a couple times before I just started typing.
I would like to clarify that this is not said with the intent to spread malice or negativity towards OP.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. There are plenty of valid critiques to be offered of the Game Changers Series, as is true for every piece of media created by people ever.
This statement is not literary criticism though.
This is a contemporary example of the exact kind of racism Shane Hollander would experience in universe.
Someone saying Shane is not asian enough for it to have any meaningful impact on his character or the story is racist.
It holds a group to the standard of monolithic homogeneity that punishes outliers for failing to conform on the basis of perpetuating the narrative that there is only a single correct way to perform a culture and any deviation from that means you do not belong. This in group mentality feeds off of the idea that there is a proximity to whiteness a POC can gain that makes them immune to suffering genuine consequences of their still visually apparent racial identity. Colorism, mysogyny, and nationalism are several tools used to enforce this concept, and promote infighting within people of the global majority that allows white supremacy and racist institutions to remain unchallenged. Most notably seen in the black community as it was instilled during the era American chattel slavery to discourage cooperation and rebellions, then perpetuated through Jim Crow, the civil rights era, and into contemporary times. [Ex: the paper bag test, team darkskin/lightskin, area code shaming]
As a little black girl who grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood, and went from a majority POC Elementary School, to a predominantly white middle school, then back to a fairly diverse high school, before attending a PWI for university how you think about race is different when you're surrounded by people who don't look like you vs people who do. But both groups expect conformity and discourage outliers. The POC as the minority experience does this with systemic suppression and state sanctioned violence.
I think Shane's experience is very accurate to a POC raised around mostly white people.
So let's dive in and learn how to separate what a character is saying from what the author's intent is.
A few literary terms you'll need to know before we continue.
Unreliable Narrator: a narrator who cannot be trusted, one whose credibility is compromised
Narrative: any account of a series of related events or experiences
Characterization: Representation of persons in narrative and dramatic works of art
Direct: The author literally tells the audience what a character is like. This may be done via the narrator, another character or by the character themselves.
Indirect: The audience must infer for themselves what the character is like through the character's thoughts, actions, speech (choice of words, manner of speaking), physical appearance, mannerisms and interaction with other characters, including other characters' reactions to that particular person.
Authorial intent: Author's intent as it is encoded in their work.
Dramatic Irony: provides the audience with information of which characters are unaware, thereby placing the AUDIENCE in a position of ADVANTAGE to recognize their words and actions as counter-productive or opposed to what their situation actually requires.
Text: What is literally written on the pages often can be interpreted at face value.
Objective: Statements of fact that are universally understood and accepted. [Ex. Shane is Asian]
Subjective: Stated opinions that may not be universally held but are implied through contradictory facts in universe. [Ex. Shane is an asshole]
Subtext: Aspect of communication that is not explicitly announced
Objective: Implicit truths about the narrative that while not initially or even ever stated outright are universally understood and easily supported by observable facts. [Ex. Shane is autistic]
Subjective: This can also be referred to as speculation. Subjective as a rule is a gray area of relativity that defines variable interpretations depending on the readers personal experience. Subjective Subtext is audience interpretation of things that are never directly confirmed by the text. This typically comes into play when addressing the contemporary world the work was created in and the inherent social bias common among the population at the time.
Critically this is NOT saying subjective subtext lacks significance, truth, or value in a literary interpretation. It is the deepest level of subconscious intent and needs to be addressed ONLY WITH a comprehensive understanding of every level before it. [Ex. (In the interest of objectivity I'm using a non Game Changers example) the poem: Bluey In A Genocide by Omar Sakr]
If you've gotten this far and have strong negative opinions of The Game Changers series, have you read all of the books?
Yes
No
Voting ended onApr 18
If you haven't read the books stop here. Go read them. Develop your own opinions with the literary tools we went over and come back if you still have questions. Yes I do mean all of the books not just HR and TLG. They're in a series for a reason and despite popular opinion authors don't just throw multiple 80k word manuscripts at you for funsies.
For those of you who still have questions let's continue with a brief spoiled analysis intro below the cut.
To start by addressing OP's initial claim that:
"Rachel Reid never had any intent behind making Shane a person of color"
This is speculative subtext at best that is directly contradicted by objective text. In other words, it is a biased interpretation of the story that does not have a textually supported argument. To allow myself a small pedantic consideration "any intent" isn't even a complete qualifier. As any means any. Literally positive, negative, or neutral.
This argument as it is currently phrased states that Rachel Reid wrote Shane as asian unintentionally? That'd be quite the miraculous feat spending a year writing editing, rewriting, editing, finalizing and publishing a whole novel without once having a second thought about the racial identity of one of your two protagonists, especially as it so very differs from the norm of not only the setting you've staged the story but also the genre you're writing in. I cannot count how many books I've read where the darkest a skin tone is described is as a "tan olive" on a background villain who doesn't come in until halfway through the book.
If you genuinely believe a person can be that oblivious to their own writing choices, yet still produce several characters within her work of differing racial and cultural identities, then you definitely haven't even read this far into this post. In my experience people who project that level of ignorance onto others just want moral superiority out of an argument and are not likely to genuinely engage with any evidence to the contrary.
A more likely interpretation of OP's statement is an argument that Reid had no intentions for Shane to be positive representation. Or possibly that there is direct malicious intent, for him to be bad representation.
To address this OP provided some relevant examples of how the real life NHL is a racist institution however their argument is against the Game Changer's universe. These are not the same thing. And the singular passage they've highlighted is from Ilya's perspective not Shane's.
Ilya, a white man who is an unreliable narrator dealing with his own shit shares his perception of Shane's reality.
I think it's a much fairer interpretation that this demonstrates another layer of their continuous miscommunications as Ilya himself is not aware of racism as a problem that can affect Shane Hollander. This statement is Ilya participating in enforcement of the power structure by being blind to it's effect, despite seeing Shane visibly uncomfortable. This takes place in The Long Game, a book thematically defined by Ilya and Shane's inability to recognize each others suffering. This statement being so obviously untrue is likely intended to highlight that disparity between their perceived realities. Because to begin it all this is Ilya's first ever perception of Shane:
To establish whether or not this statement is proven false in Rachel Reid's text, let's first ask: who is Shane Hollander?
Shane Hollander is Canadian, and ethnically half Japanese. Shane speaks English and French.
His mother Yuna is Japanese Canadian her family having immigrated to Canada before she was born and subsequently raised in Montreal.
Chapter. 5 Heated Rivalry
We have no reference to either of them speaking Japanese, visiting Japan, or any other reference to current familial/traditional cultural attachments or practices.
Shane is not Japanese, and romance is a very tight genre already so what specifically of his ethnic heritage would you have liked to see more of? Why? What would it have added to the story? How many words would you have needed to do it well enough to satisfy everyone?
To the people saying you could make Shane white and it wouldn't have changed the story at all, and then writing thousand word "chirps" about the subtle implications his race adds that Rachel Reid missed capitalizing on by not making him "more asian". Consider: Shane is asian in cannon and that is a decision she as the writer made and published. Shane's race just isn't the central conflict of the story. It's a minor complication that mirrors his sexuality as something that others him in the world of hockey like his sexuality except it's visually apparent and not something that can be denied.
Yuna's family moved to Canada and assimilated. That is a valid cultural experience that deserves to be represented just as much as the families who emigrated from their home countries and fought to retain their ethnic cultural heritage. There are benefits drawbacks to both wanting to feel like you belong in your new home while not wanting to relinquish connections to your birthplace. Racism and xenophobia have a lot of weight in this consideration and every performance of self as a person of color will be criticized by people who seek cultural homogeneity.
So with this we've established Shane Hollander has very little to no cultural connections to his Japanese heritage.
He is a canadian man who at most ticks an Asian checkbox on a census form, because he is visible not white.
A very common experience for 2nd generation children of immigrants.
As an aside if you're interested in more specific statistics of the racial makeup Shane would have been surrounded by we can look at Ottawa his home town and the census records around 1999 when he would have been 8 years old. Which are a matter of public record feel free to follow the link if you need a relative percentage.
Continuing to Shane's experience I'm honestly capped the amount of unsolicited effort I'm willing to invest on a post. If anyone would like more information feel free to send me an ask, and I'll pick the deep dive back up if the ask is in good faith.
I’m not sure which parts of my post you misunderstood but I don’t think that Shane needs any more exploration of his culture. He is the child of an immigrant who was assimilated herself.
My critique is that we don’t get acknowledgement of Shane’s race and intersectionality in any meaningful way in the book and that wouldn’t be a problem if it was a regular hockey smut series.
The problem comes when you want to make a book series addressing the problems in hockey culture and then leave out hockey’s original sin. Racism is so deeply embedded in the culture of hockey that it is impossible to address hockey’s cultural issues without addressing racism.
Racism is the foundation of the NHL not having a domestic violence or sexual assault policy. Racism is the reason why white coaches continue to abuse players and get away with it. Racism comes into play when we talk about defenders and concussions.
Just this year, in 2026, Jason Robertson, who is Filipino and white, was left off the Olympics roster despite being the top American points scorer because of the legacy of the NHL’s anti Asian discrimination.
Nick Suzuki, the real life captain of the Montreal Canadiens who is Japanese and white, like Shane, is currently the victim of racial abuse because his team is in the playoffs and the racist memes and “jokes” are pouring in in every comment section where the Canadiens post results.
When you write a character who has marginalized experience that is not yours, especially in a sport where literally every single person of color in it will tell you they regularly experience racism, you should do your due diligence in terms of how you can depict their experience realistically and respectfully.
Now, if this were just a for fun hockey romance and not a “series where the characters are going to address all of hockey’s cultural problems”, well I’d probably still have some issues with the Shane was written with regards to race. But for her to write a series where hockey’s culture problems are a major theme, have a main character who is part of a marginalized group that literally experiences the worst hockey culture has to offer because the sport is literally a wyt supremacist safe haven tells me there was a lack of intention behind making Shane Asian.
Hockey’s longest running and greatest sin is in complicity in white supremacy culture, something that has been extensively documented and is readily available to anyone who is writing a person of color in that extremely wyt sport. Again, if it was just marketed as fun hockey series and not “series that tackles tough themes” I’d feel a little differently.
I highly recommend checking out the books Leveling the Ice, Game Misconduct, We Breed Lions, Conflicted Scars: An Average Player’s Journey to the NHL, Skating on Thin Ice, and Call Me Indian as well as the documentary Black Ice on Netflix (which also talks about anti-Asian discrimination in hockey) and the 2020 and 2021 interviews and meetings of the Hockey Diversity Alliance which all shed more light on why I’m saying that there wasn’t intent behind making Shane Asian.
Culturally, Shane is very much assimilated and benefits from that, but he is not white, and he is in a sport that will punish him for that.
Writing a series about the flaws in hockey culture, creating a main character who is a person of color, and then proceeding to ignore that the foundational issue in hockey is racism shows a lack of intent behind deciding on Shane’s race.
Oh so cool you mean like this in Chapter 37 of TLG?
Where Scott comes to Ilya and Shane after their meeting with Crowell and talks about what is presumably going to be the central plot of Unrivaled, marginalized players in the league coming together to address all these issues including racism.
Have you read TLG? Also what do you know about the romance novel publishing industry, cause oof. For Shane himself to directly address these things to the level you're describing that would have to be his central conflict.
Yes racism is a major issue in the institution of professional hockey I'm not denying that. But Rachel is even less qualified to handle writing a first person perspective experience if that were the central conflict. The books aren't perfect. Literally no one ever talks about these books without making an obligatory "there are many valid critiscisms of this..." qualifier. However they are a really good first step that has gotten a lot of attention on these issues to affect positive change for the real life BIPOC Hockey players affected by this institution.
When you say it's not acknowledged in any meaningful way what exactly do you mean by that? What would have been meaningful enough for you, who judging from a couple pictures on your blog are not Asian and therefore not a part of the marginalized group who would seek meaning in their representation in this text? I found this to be very meaningful, because meaning is a subjective quality and every reader is often going to interpret meaning differently.
Did you want a book where Shane is being hate crimes every other page?
Did you want a backstory where Shane was the little boy being called slurs on the ice instead of watching someone who looks like him get that treatment, knowing the only thing protecting him is his western name?
Did you want an angst filled drama that only focuses on the pain and suffering a person would experience for being a minority at the top of a field entrenched in bigotry and toxicity?
Read a different book then. You've cited several that already exist and address those issues so well you feel comfortable recommending them. This is a romance. There are in fact very strict rules authors have to adhere to within this genre.
Because it is a normal hockey smut romance novel, the main character just happens to be Asian.
In my opinion we should be celebrating representative media that doesn't just focus on suffering as if it is some kind of virtue.
It's not perfect, but I think it's a wonderful first step in the right direction. If you don't, then write the book you clearly want to see instead yourself. She is addressing the systemic issues truly. But systemic change doesn't happen by one person of color raging against the machine, that usually results in us getting targeted and expelled. Shane cannot change these things himself, and his entire narrative centers around how he instead tries to change himself to fit in specifically centered around the more plot relevant marginalization of his sexuality. Because it does still have to be about the romance as the central plot.
Or else this book would not have been published.
If you think it can be done better, prove it, and do better. Write your own absolutely perfect Hockey Smut romance novel that also perfectly addresses every single thing wrong with the NHL. If it's so easy a white woman with no sensitivity readers, support editors, or major infrastructure could have done it on her own in 2019. With the foreknowledge of all that it would become 7 years later then you do it.
Ah yes a single mention of the existence of racism once again brought up by a white character because apparently Shane is too oblivious to notice that racism exists in the sport he plays which implies that he’s not only oblivious to how racism impacts him in the sport but also oblivious to how it impacts JJ, which makes him a shitty fucking friend.
If you read what I wrote and think I want a book where he’s hate crimed every other page I don’t know what to tell you. I want the reality of people of color acknowledged on the page because it impacts 100% of Shane’s career in hockey.
The show did an amazing job of subtly integrating the microaggressions he would get and of talking about his past and history. You don’t have to show hate crimes on page to illustrate racial reality.
If RR wanted to keep it a fun hockey romance series with no social commentary, she could’ve done that. She didn’t have to get into the role of enforcers (once again, colored by anti-Blackness). She definitely didn’t have to get into the leagues history of covering up sexual assault, which is explicitly tied to the white supremacy culture of the NHL. No one made her write about topics that are tied to race and racism in her cute little hockey romance book. She chose to do that and then also chose not to fully reckon with the reality she wrote her characters into.
By all means, I would not have these criticisms if she did not identify and promote her books as critiquing the toxicity of hockey culture.
Also the book was published in 2019. The links I used were to things that Rachel Reid could’ve easily googled before she decided to make a character Asian in a series about hockey.
There are dozens of hockey romance authors that fit within the strict hockey genre that still tactfully discuss things like race and racism even when it is not in any way a central part of the story. Of course, most of these authors are people of color who have to critically engage with the culture of hockey before they can even come to the stage of writing that book.
Hockey fans have known there was a racism problem for decades, since the very beginning of hockey, since Canada used hockey as an excuse to bring indigenous children to residential schools to be abused and tortured.
Here’s thing thing: im not mad about the lack of racial nuance in heated rivalry (although there is something to be said about the fetishizing ways she describes biracial people in both GC and HR) because that’s the first book. I’m frustrated by the long game because the long game happened two books after RR decided she was going to have this series deal with serious issues in hockey.
She was fully capable of doing research for presenting the issues in role model even before national sexual abuse scandals involving hickey players came to light. She can watch hours of interviews to make sure she gets Ilya’s accent exactly right in terms of his progress learning English. She could even find Russian sensitivity readers to make sure her Russian was depicted well in the book.
She was on discord taking suggestions of what to put in the long game (like Ilya getting a dog) and kicking people out of discord for talking about racism and racial bias when it came to Shane’s character. It was not like no one had pointed this out. People have been talking about this for years, just like people have been criticizing for years how RR portrayed Fabian because some Lebanese felt it was a very othering portrayal of a Lebanese person.
I also take exception to the idea that the only way you can critique authors regarding their portrayal of characters who share marginalized identities the author doesn’t have is if you yourself are writing a book. Which, by the way, I am and I have and am actually submitting manuscripts for my book, but that doesn’t matter.
Again, I’m not saying Shane needs to be hatecrimed on page or slurs thrown around. What I am saying is that a person of color in hockey would absolutely know hockey’s horrors but it’s portrayed like Shane doesn’t fully understand but somehow his white boyfriend does. Racism exists in RR’s universe, per the screenshot posted above. In a world where racism exists, any person of color innocent would be very aware of the flaws in hockey.
Anyway, you can absolutely criticize an author for how they portray people who are part of a marginalized group that said author is not apart of. And if anything, reading other books only sharpens my criticism with regards to it.
Rachel Reid’s defense of calling Shane a stupid idiot being that she also calls her autistic child a stupid idiot has to be the most autism mom thing I’ve heard in awhile
Rachel Reid never had any intent behind making Shane a person of color and this passage below is the biggest proof of that:
“Ilya glanced at the end of the table, where Shane was sitting.As Ilya had suspected, Shane looked confused and uncomfortable. Hockey had never made Shane sad for a minute of his life. Ilya couldn't pretend to know how it felt to be let down by the game he loved-not in the way Max or Ryan had been-but he was more aware of hockey'sflaws than Shane was. He'd been paying more attention, over the past few years, to the darker side of his sport.”
More on why Rachel Reid’s racial bias becomes extremely evident throughout Shane’s arc below the cut.
So while writing a fic where Shane talks to his son about how hockey is hard for people that look like them and how it’s okay if he doesn’t want to play hockey because of it, I recalled a few lines in The Long Game that don’t sit right with me.
I have talked about how Rachel Reid’s refusal to engage with white supremacy as a core problem in hockey harms her analysis of the other problems that are present in hockey.
But this to me sits differently to that.
This to me is the clearest evidence that not a lick of thought was put into writing Shane as a biracial Asian man in a sport that is dominated by white people and a white supremacist culture to its core. It is also pretty clear that she doesn’t think much of Shane with regards to his character motivations in the Long Game.
So let’s unpack this:
Rachel Reid, at least from Ilya’s point of view has stated that Shane looks *confused* and uncomfortable by discussion of hockey’s flaws. I’ll give you uncomfortable since it’s always uncomfortable when flaws in a thing you love as much as Shane loves hockey are brought up. But confused?
You are going to sit here and tell me a gay, autistic, biracial Asian man who has played hockey his entire life is unaware as to why some hockey players hate the institution? As if this isn’t the same institution that is the reason Shane can’t be public with the man he loves. As if he wasn’t an Asian child playing hockey in Canada. And Asian child that was good at hockey.
To make my points in this, I will be using examples from prior to 2020 only despite, with an April 2022 release date, the long game manuscript being due April 2021 at the latest, which was after the hockey world had started reckoning with race.
There is extensive documentation of racism including anti Asian racism in Canadian Hockey that spans decades.
But let’s get more specific and talk about specific hockey players who have been open about their experiences:
Larry Kwong is the first person of Asian descent to be drafted and play in the National Hockey League. His debut season was in 1948 and he spent only 60 seconds on the ice. This was his only NHL game. Kwong is known for breaking the color barrier in ice hockey, despite First Nations players having played in the NHL first. I, personally, do not known enough First Nations history to comment on why that is.
In November 2019, a Calgary Flames coach resigned for being racially abusive to his players.
It took until 2019 for the NHL to implement stricter consequences for slurs.
A 13 year old Black child was racially abused by the opposing team and their fan, also in 2019.
Val James spoke about his experiences of racism in 2015.
Of the 8676 men that have played in the NHL, only 45 of them have identified as Asian. For the math challenged, that is 0.5% of total NHL players and many of these men are from recent years.
Shane is a minority (Asian) within a minority (people of color) in a sport that is dominated by white people.
There is zero, zero, zero chance that an Asian child makes it through peewee hockey without at least one experience of racism directed at them (or their parents). There is zero chance that that same child who turns out to be very good at hockey also makes it through triple A, major juniors, and all the way into the NHL without a single hockey related incident making a biracial Asian child sad.
Sidney Crosby has talked about adults encouraging their children to make dirty hits on him because he was very good at hockey.
An asian child in that same set of circumstances is in for a worse fate than Crosby because they are Asian and they are good at a sport that racist white Canadians tie to their national identity. Whatever abuse Sidney Crosby, who Shane is based partly off of, double it and give it to Shane and you might get close to how he was treated as a child.
Shane would’ve been exposed to the worst of hockey’s racism probably from the moment that anyone realized how good he was. He’s always been the best everywhere he’s played which means he’s always been outperforming white children which means he’s always been exposed to the worst racism that Canadian hockey culture has to offer.
We know this because white kids in hockey get bullied for being good. We know this because children of color in hockey get bullied for being not white.
And Shane is BOTH!!!!!
Even removing hockey culture, do you not know that Asian children experience racism and prejudice in Canada, that they experience at school and on the playground and at the park and at summer camp, why the fuck wouldn’t it be present in hockey when it’s the same damn kids? It is the “Canadians are too progressive to be racist!” bullshit that is their national image because they’re marginally better than their neighbors to the south but it doesn’t mean that racism doesn’t exist.
The idea that a person of color doesn’t know how bad hockey culture can be is absurd. The idea that said person’s white immigrant partner is somehow more aware of hockey’s flaws than a person of color is absurd. The idea that a person of color is totally unaware and even confused by discussion of hockey’s flaws is so difficult to imagine that it’s laughable.
The idea that hockey has never made Shane sad is functionally impossible. It relies on a history of Canada that doesn’t exist, and certainly one that doesn’t exist in the GCU universe seeing as Scott’s coach talks about the racism he faced and that doesn’t all go away in a few decades, especially in an organization so reticent to change as the NHL.
Like, be so forreal, a biracial Asian man in a league that has had less than 45 Asian players total, who billeted and played hockey in a majority white city, who grew up playing hockey in Canada and then joined a league with a racism problem that is documented by the book has zero awareness of the flaws of hockey?
Are you seriously going to try and sell me on that?
The only logical explanation is that Rachel Reid wasn’t writing Shane as a person of color. She was writing him from her white lens without a lick of regard to the ethnic background she gave him and it makes Shane’s character lack so much dimension and depth in the long game.
Shane is the person who doesn’t want to come out for no reason or the one who is so attached to his terrible team and teammates that he doesn’t notice hockey’s flaws instead of him being one of literally probably 5 Asian men in a league that starts the racial abuse at peewee and continues into the big leagues who has to manage being Asian and gay and dating his rival and all the implications that come with it.
You can’t both make Shane an Asian man in hockey and make him totally oblivious to hockey’s flaws.
I went back and forth on whether I wanted to actually acknowledge this take or if I was just going to block and move on like I normally do, and I blocked and unblock them a couple times before I just started typing.
I would like to clarify that this is not said with the intent to spread malice or negativity towards OP.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. There are plenty of valid critiques to be offered of the Game Changers Series, as is true for every piece of media created by people ever.
This statement is not literary criticism though.
This is a contemporary example of the exact kind of racism Shane Hollander would experience in universe.
Someone saying Shane is not asian enough for it to have any meaningful impact on his character or the story is racist.
It holds a group to the standard of monolithic homogeneity that punishes outliers for failing to conform on the basis of perpetuating the narrative that there is only a single correct way to perform a culture and any deviation from that means you do not belong. This in group mentality feeds off of the idea that there is a proximity to whiteness a POC can gain that makes them immune to suffering genuine consequences of their still visually apparent racial identity. Colorism, mysogyny, and nationalism are several tools used to enforce this concept, and promote infighting within people of the global majority that allows white supremacy and racist institutions to remain unchallenged. Most notably seen in the black community as it was instilled during the era American chattel slavery to discourage cooperation and rebellions, then perpetuated through Jim Crow, the civil rights era, and into contemporary times. [Ex: the paper bag test, team darkskin/lightskin, area code shaming]
As a little black girl who grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood, and went from a majority POC Elementary School, to a predominantly white middle school, then back to a fairly diverse high school, before attending a PWI for university how you think about race is different when you're surrounded by people who don't look like you vs people who do. But both groups expect conformity and discourage outliers. The POC as the minority experience does this with systemic suppression and state sanctioned violence.
I think Shane's experience is very accurate to a POC raised around mostly white people.
So let's dive in and learn how to separate what a character is saying from what the author's intent is.
A few literary terms you'll need to know before we continue.
Unreliable Narrator: a narrator who cannot be trusted, one whose credibility is compromised
Narrative: any account of a series of related events or experiences
Characterization: Representation of persons in narrative and dramatic works of art
Direct: The author literally tells the audience what a character is like. This may be done via the narrator, another character or by the character themselves.
Indirect: The audience must infer for themselves what the character is like through the character's thoughts, actions, speech (choice of words, manner of speaking), physical appearance, mannerisms and interaction with other characters, including other characters' reactions to that particular person.
Authorial intent: Author's intent as it is encoded in their work.
Dramatic Irony: provides the audience with information of which characters are unaware, thereby placing the AUDIENCE in a position of ADVANTAGE to recognize their words and actions as counter-productive or opposed to what their situation actually requires.
Text: What is literally written on the pages often can be interpreted at face value.
Objective: Statements of fact that are universally understood and accepted. [Ex. Shane is Asian]
Subjective: Stated opinions that may not be universally held but are implied through contradictory facts in universe. [Ex. Shane is an asshole]
Subtext: Aspect of communication that is not explicitly announced
Objective: Implicit truths about the narrative that while not initially or even ever stated outright are universally understood and easily supported by observable facts. [Ex. Shane is autistic]
Subjective: This can also be referred to as speculation. Subjective as a rule is a gray area of relativity that defines variable interpretations depending on the readers personal experience. Subjective Subtext is audience interpretation of things that are never directly confirmed by the text. This typically comes into play when addressing the contemporary world the work was created in and the inherent social bias common among the population at the time.
Critically this is NOT saying subjective subtext lacks significance, truth, or value in a literary interpretation. It is the deepest level of subconscious intent and needs to be addressed ONLY WITH a comprehensive understanding of every level before it. [Ex. (In the interest of objectivity I'm using a non Game Changers example) the poem: Bluey In A Genocide by Omar Sakr]
If you've gotten this far and have strong negative opinions of The Game Changers series, have you read all of the books?
Yes
No
Voting ended onApr 18
If you haven't read the books stop here. Go read them. Develop your own opinions with the literary tools we went over and come back if you still have questions. Yes I do mean all of the books not just HR and TLG. They're in a series for a reason and despite popular opinion authors don't just throw multiple 80k word manuscripts at you for funsies.
For those of you who still have questions let's continue with a brief spoiled analysis intro below the cut.
To start by addressing OP's initial claim that:
"Rachel Reid never had any intent behind making Shane a person of color"
This is speculative subtext at best that is directly contradicted by objective text. In other words, it is a biased interpretation of the story that does not have a textually supported argument. To allow myself a small pedantic consideration "any intent" isn't even a complete qualifier. As any means any. Literally positive, negative, or neutral.
This argument as it is currently phrased states that Rachel Reid wrote Shane as asian unintentionally? That'd be quite the miraculous feat spending a year writing editing, rewriting, editing, finalizing and publishing a whole novel without once having a second thought about the racial identity of one of your two protagonists, especially as it so very differs from the norm of not only the setting you've staged the story but also the genre you're writing in. I cannot count how many books I've read where the darkest a skin tone is described is as a "tan olive" on a background villain who doesn't come in until halfway through the book.
If you genuinely believe a person can be that oblivious to their own writing choices, yet still produce several characters within her work of differing racial and cultural identities, then you definitely haven't even read this far into this post. In my experience people who project that level of ignorance onto others just want moral superiority out of an argument and are not likely to genuinely engage with any evidence to the contrary.
A more likely interpretation of OP's statement is an argument that Reid had no intentions for Shane to be positive representation. Or possibly that there is direct malicious intent, for him to be bad representation.
To address this OP provided some relevant examples of how the real life NHL is a racist institution however their argument is against the Game Changer's universe. These are not the same thing. And the singular passage they've highlighted is from Ilya's perspective not Shane's.
Ilya, a white man who is an unreliable narrator dealing with his own shit shares his perception of Shane's reality.
I think it's a much fairer interpretation that this demonstrates another layer of their continuous miscommunications as Ilya himself is not aware of racism as a problem that can affect Shane Hollander. This statement is Ilya participating in enforcement of the power structure by being blind to it's effect, despite seeing Shane visibly uncomfortable. This takes place in The Long Game, a book thematically defined by Ilya and Shane's inability to recognize each others suffering. This statement being so obviously untrue is likely intended to highlight that disparity between their perceived realities. Because to begin it all this is Ilya's first ever perception of Shane:
To establish whether or not this statement is proven false in Rachel Reid's text, let's first ask: who is Shane Hollander?
Shane Hollander is Canadian, and ethnically half Japanese. Shane speaks English and French.
His mother Yuna is Japanese Canadian her family having immigrated to Canada before she was born and subsequently raised in Montreal.
Chapter. 5 Heated Rivalry
We have no reference to either of them speaking Japanese, visiting Japan, or any other reference to current familial/traditional cultural attachments or practices.
Shane is not Japanese, and romance is a very tight genre already so what specifically of his ethnic heritage would you have liked to see more of? Why? What would it have added to the story? How many words would you have needed to do it well enough to satisfy everyone?
To the people saying you could make Shane white and it wouldn't have changed the story at all, and then writing thousand word "chirps" about the subtle implications his race adds that Rachel Reid missed capitalizing on by not making him "more asian". Consider: Shane is asian in cannon and that is a decision she as the writer made and published. Shane's race just isn't the central conflict of the story. It's a minor complication that mirrors his sexuality as something that others him in the world of hockey like his sexuality except it's visually apparent and not something that can be denied.
Yuna's family moved to Canada and assimilated. That is a valid cultural experience that deserves to be represented just as much as the families who emigrated from their home countries and fought to retain their ethnic cultural heritage. There are benefits drawbacks to both wanting to feel like you belong in your new home while not wanting to relinquish connections to your birthplace. Racism and xenophobia have a lot of weight in this consideration and every performance of self as a person of color will be criticized by people who seek cultural homogeneity.
So with this we've established Shane Hollander has very little to no cultural connections to his Japanese heritage.
He is a canadian man who at most ticks an Asian checkbox on a census form, because he is visible not white.
A very common experience for 2nd generation children of immigrants.
As an aside if you're interested in more specific statistics of the racial makeup Shane would have been surrounded by we can look at Ottawa his home town and the census records around 1999 when he would have been 8 years old. Which are a matter of public record feel free to follow the link if you need a relative percentage.
Continuing to Shane's experience I'm honestly capped the amount of unsolicited effort I'm willing to invest on a post. If anyone would like more information feel free to send me an ask, and I'll pick the deep dive back up if the ask is in good faith.
I’m not sure which parts of my post you misunderstood but I don’t think that Shane needs any more exploration of his culture. He is the child of an immigrant who was assimilated herself.
My critique is that we don’t get acknowledgement of Shane’s race and intersectionality in any meaningful way in the book and that wouldn’t be a problem if it was a regular hockey smut series.
The problem comes when you want to make a book series addressing the problems in hockey culture and then leave out hockey’s original sin. Racism is so deeply embedded in the culture of hockey that it is impossible to address hockey’s cultural issues without addressing racism.
Racism is the foundation of the NHL not having a domestic violence or sexual assault policy. Racism is the reason why white coaches continue to abuse players and get away with it. Racism comes into play when we talk about defenders and concussions.
Just this year, in 2026, Jason Robertson, who is Filipino and white, was left off the Olympics roster despite being the top American points scorer because of the legacy of the NHL’s anti Asian discrimination.
Nick Suzuki, the real life captain of the Montreal Canadiens who is Japanese and white, like Shane, is currently the victim of racial abuse because his team is in the playoffs and the racist memes and “jokes” are pouring in in every comment section where the Canadiens post results.
When you write a character who has marginalized experience that is not yours, especially in a sport where literally every single person of color in it will tell you they regularly experience racism, you should do your due diligence in terms of how you can depict their experience realistically and respectfully.
Now, if this were just a for fun hockey romance and not a “series where the characters are going to address all of hockey’s cultural problems”, well I’d probably still have some issues with the Shane was written with regards to race. But for her to write a series where hockey’s culture problems are a major theme, have a main character who is part of a marginalized group that literally experiences the worst hockey culture has to offer because the sport is literally a wyt supremacist safe haven tells me there was a lack of intention behind making Shane Asian.
Hockey’s longest running and greatest sin is in complicity in white supremacy culture, something that has been extensively documented and is readily available to anyone who is writing a person of color in that extremely wyt sport. Again, if it was just marketed as fun hockey series and not “series that tackles tough themes” I’d feel a little differently.
I highly recommend checking out the books Leveling the Ice, Game Misconduct, We Breed Lions, Conflicted Scars: An Average Player’s Journey to the NHL, Skating on Thin Ice, and Call Me Indian as well as the documentary Black Ice on Netflix (which also talks about anti-Asian discrimination in hockey) and the 2020 and 2021 interviews and meetings of the Hockey Diversity Alliance which all shed more light on why I’m saying that there wasn’t intent behind making Shane Asian.
Culturally, Shane is very much assimilated and benefits from that, but he is not white, and he is in a sport that will punish him for that.
Writing a series about the flaws in hockey culture, creating a main character who is a person of color, and then proceeding to ignore that the foundational issue in hockey is racism shows a lack of intent behind deciding on Shane’s race.
I think that what many people don't understand is how micro-aggressive Rachel Reid comes across whenever she discusses Shane Hollander. I don't think anyone should be attacking her for irrelevant things (e.g., her gender or her fucking Parkinson's), but we have to call out the contrast in how she talks about Ilya and Shane on a micro aggressive level. Because there is no way his "ridiculous performance enhancement EATING DISORDER" is immediately trumped by his European, depressed boyfriend. Rachel Reid, arguably, does not know the character she created.
Let me be clear. I am well aware that she is the original author of the Game Changers universe and therefore Heated Rivalry. I am aware that, regardless, Shane Hollander is her character, so at the end of the day, nothing she writes is out of character. I think that she, however, is unaware of exactly the world she is having her gay, half-asian character exist in and how exactly he and the rest of the world would interact with each other. Shane Hollander is in a straight, white dominated sport as a gay, non-white person, and just the non-white part brings for a very brutal experience. At the end of the day, this is a romance-erotica and I'm not going to expect the world's best hockey commentary, but it's clear she has the capacity to go over serious issues like depression, sexual self-medication, etc. because that's what she as a white woman has the capacity to do.
So, no, I don't think she fully gets Shane because she has a fundamentally different experience of life as a white woman. That's that—she, in all cases, never will fully understand what she's putting out into the world. All of her very, very weird (and apathetic) takes on Shane Hollander show such a thing. All in all, we just have to sigh and understand that this is not the kind of story she's equipped to tell, but also point out and critique how her language (in the books or online) in regards to Shane Hollander can read as micro-aggressive whether she means it to or not. Perhaps this will change and be adapted in Unrivaled, and perhaps it won't.
the thing about Troy and Shane is that Troy can never fix it. he can never un-say the terrible, disgusting, homophobic, [edited to remove the word "racist" bc there is no canonical evidence that troy was explicitly racist] shit he said. he can never un-laugh at the shit that Dallas Kent said. he can't go back in time and rewrite his ugly past. he will never earn Shane's trust or respect. the damage cannot he undone.
Shane will always know that there were lots of other closeted MLH players struggling with internalized homophobia who didn't resort to the tactics that Troy did. those players include Shane himself, who is gay AND a person of colour, and Shane's husband, whose literal life would have been in danger in Russia if he were outed. so Shane will never ever sympathize with Troy. he might understand why Troy did what he did, but that will never excuse it.
and Troy. Troy just has to live with that. like a lot of us, Troy has to accept that self-hatred and internalized homophobia don't excuse being bigoted and hateful towards others. the hurt you caused them is not negated by the fact that you were hurting, too. and part of growing as a person and trying to be better is learning to live with the guilt, shame and regret. you don't get to make yourself feel better by being absolved. you can try to be better going forward. you can try to spend the rest of your life doing more good than the harm you did in your past. you can try to forgive yourself. but you can't erase it.
Shane might forgive, but he won't forget. he won't like, trust or respect Troy. and playing on the same team means that Troy can never forget either. he will ALWAYS be face to face with his mistakes. he can never escape that discomfort. and he just. has. to live with it.
somehow it comes up that troy had a crush on shane and was going to ask for his number. and after troy gets ribbed by his teammates and ilya makes a big scene, shane is like, “well i never would’ve gone out with you lol.”
and troy smiles, “right, because you were with roz the whole time.”
“i mean, yes, but also because you and dallas kent spent years calling me and jj ‘rush hour’ and asking hayden if his wife was his beard to cover up his big gay relationship with me.”
the rest of the centaurs blink. harris puts his head in his hands and groans.
i cannot believe this guy is saying it's still very similar from 20 years ago for canadian junior hockey "On changing hate sentiment in the Asian community"
also, paul kariya (who i consider the closest nhl comparison to shane actually, not sidcros) was constantly disrespected (considered weak and a diver by media/other players/fans) and even targeted despite being very skilled.
I need to do more research on his experiences as he’s only been briefly mentioned. There have only been 40 total NHL players of Asian descent and I wonder how many of them stayed quiet
I came back to Canada two years ago to run a junior program after being gone for over 20 years. I was surprised that not a lot had changed from when I played Junior hockey. Stuff that was tolerated 20 years ago still seems to be tolerated today and that is not right, this should not be happening.
It’s so disappointing to see that it’s been decades and nothing has changed. It’s so disheartening in so many ways 😭
begging at this point: stop asking r*chel r*id questions she is not going to reveal the meaning. who let this man cook. he is onto nothing. et cetera and so forth. we need an immediate moratorium on trying to get her to engage with her own material in any meaningful way. it's time to accept the fact that she is in the word processor slinging any old thing together. and any lightning she catches in that bottle is accidental. she doesn't know how it got there and she will not be able to explain it to you. as a matter of fact everything additional she reveals just makes it all worse and somehow more shallow. so how about everybody puts aside their inquiring minds and backs away slowly. and do not get on this post and try to tell me i'm misogynistic for thinking she's ridiculous. she's being willfully ignorant at this point and i'm tired of it i'm sick to death of it we absolutely should expect more from her if she's going to continue to write these characters. it simply is not acceptable for her to continue to approach shane's race the way that she does. i support women's wrongs as long as they're not fucking racist
